[Seahawk]

I have lived here for over 25 years and have probably lost power for a total of 35 days or so. The local power supplier is excellent and they work their butts off before andafter storms. They are really good. Our problems is that we are at the end of the grid through a series of woods. Down trees are the biggest issue.

There are some pros and cons here:

- We have a well so I can have water
- We have a basement that will flood so I must keep the sump pumps going. I hate having a basement.

I did the small generator thing to start. After the first prolonged outage, 5 days, we got a bigger generator and a transfer panel installed to plug the generator into. Running extension cables around the house is nuts!

The larger gen powers the well, refrigerators/freezers and sump pumps as well as lights, internet and the TV. We recharge all computers, phones, etc. at night or as necessary. There are very informative charts available that show power draw for specific appliances.

The transfer panel has a number of discrete switches so we can manager the load with turning items off on the transfer panel.

I kept the small gen for years as back-up but then both another, larger gen. That was 10 years ago. They still run great but my wife has a hard time pull starting them so we bought an electric start gen last Fall.

I sold the oldest of the other two generators.

So power is good. I have to have it given the basement situation.

Make sure he uses non-ethanol fuel and keeps ahead of maintenance.

I have a lot of power tools (chain saws, pole saws, etc.) so I am good there. I keep 50 gallons each of both gas and diesel fuel (which I rotate. I have only 10 gallons of none-ethanol gas but in a prolonged outage the corn stuff works).

I also store a lot of batteries and flash lights dedicated to storms. They don't get batteries until we need them. I have rechargeable pistol grip lights in three places in the house for quick access.

Flooding is a concern since I am on the Potomac. We know well in advance if the hurricane is headed our way and the county does a really good job with providing sand bags, etc. just in case.

For comfort, we have fans and a 120v a/c unit on rollers. Not a big draw. In the winter we have three fire places that will heat the house. My neighbor and I have a lot of wood we cut and split.

We also have a Coleman camp stove for back-up.

Sounds like a lot but we have gotten good at it.